


Peace by Piece

by etoiledunord



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Changeover, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-02-12
Updated: 2008-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etoiledunord/pseuds/etoiledunord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>July 6, 2007, Peter and Sylar have their final showdown. The result is something nobody expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Set the summer after Volume 2. Focus on gen Mylar interaction. This is a WIP and is likely to stay that way--the final chapter is sitting on my hard drive with only a couple hundred words in it. Sorry.

It was coming up on 4 am; the horizon to the East was tinged ever so slightly with the gray that signaled that dawn was approaching. On the third floor of a building in Manhattan, two men didn’t notice.

“Christ,” Peter breathed, sitting up. He spat blood onto the floor as he felt the lacerations down his back heal. He had been thrown into the wall, his spine broken.

On the other side of the room, another body stirred. “Such tenacity,” Sylar called as he stood. “I’m sure it’ll be a comfort to all your friends to know that you fought valiantly.” He limped forward a few steps, large amounts of blood staining the left leg of his jeans and matting down his hair.

“Don’t you dare talk about my friends,” Peter snarled, pushing himself to his feet. “I will do everything I can to keep you away from them.”

“I thought it was you they needed protecting from, Peter,” Sylar said smoothly. “A man unable to control his powers. Nearly blew up New York. But settled for his brother, instead.”

“Shut up!”

“After I kill you, they won’t have to worry about that,” Sylar taunted. “What you’re too weak to control, I will.”

“SHUT UP!”

In a fit of guilt, anger and panic, Peter sent a lightening bolt straight at Sylar’s chest, knocking him back several feet into the door, its handle hitting at the base of the man’s skull.

What little Sylar had been able to see in the dark was now indistinct and being obstructed by blackness seeping in from all sides. He tried to get up, to speak, but found he couldn’t. The pain tingling through his body felt transcendent.

Something very bad had happened, he realized.

~~~

Sylar rang the doorbell and took a step back, his hands in front of him, holding the two envelopes. After a moment, the door opened and a middle-aged woman stood before him.

“Can I help you?”

“Mrs. Petrelli, my name is Gabriel Gray. Your son, Peter, asked me to deliver a letter to you.”

“Peter?” Angela repeated. She hesitated for a second, then stepped aside. “Come in.”

Sylar entered the house. “Thank you. Is you son Nathan around, by any chance?” he asked as he handed her the envelope labeled ‘Mom.’ “I have a letter for him, too.”

“Nathan? No, I’m sorry, he’s back home with his wife and children,” she said, accepting the letter. “What is this all about?”

“Just doing a favour for a friend, is all. Why don’t you sit down and open it?” He gestured to the sitting room off the foyer.

Angela eyed him suspiciously before heading into the room and taking a seat. She tore open the side of the envelope with one of her fingernails and shook out the paper inside. Opening it up, she began to read.

Sylar didn’t need his powers to hear her scream as he passed back through the door and started down the sidewalk. “Monster,” she called him.

~~~

He decided it would be best to phase through the door while invisible to gain entry to Nathan’s residence. If the wrong person answered the doorbell, this could start on a very bad note.

Sylar found him alone in his office, sitting at his desk. He made himself visible as he extended the envelope labeled ‘Nathan’ in front of the man’s face.

Nathan looked up with a start, then, realizing who he was looking at, he jumped out of his chair entirely, backing up against the wall.

“If you’re here to hurt my wife and children because you think they might-“

“I have a letter from Peter,” Sylar interrupted, holding the envelope out again.

Nathan paused. “Peter? What?”

Sylar placed the envelope on the desk and stepped back. “He’s asked me to deliver some letters for him. I think you should read yours.”

Nathan didn’t move.

“I’m not here to hurt you or your family,” Sylar told him.

After considering for a moment, Nathan stepped tentatively forward and picked up the envelope. He ripped it open quickly and pulled the paper from inside. After a moment of reading, he staggered back against the wall again, eyes wide.

“This…” He looked up at Sylar. “This can’t…” He looked down at the letter again. “Peter…”

The next time he looked up, Sylar had vanished.

~~~

There was no way around the confrontation at the Bennet household, Sylar knew, so he simply rang the doorbell and waited with his arms in the air, the two envelopes held aloft in his right hand.

As it was summertime, it was Claire who answered the door. Seeing Sylar, she froze, her breath catching in her throat.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Sylar tried to tell her, but she had already started backing away slowly before turning and breaking into a flat-out run.

“DAD!!”

Sylar decided to enter the house, since having the neighbors see what was about to transpire would be rather sloppy and troublesome. He heard Bennet coming but didn’t bother to turn around before being shot twice in the back. He fell forward, blood pooling on the floor, the envelopes labeled ‘Claire’ and ‘Noah’ still in his hand.

~~~

When Sylar came to, he was somewhere else. Looking around, he realized that it was Isaac’s loft, still dressed up as a laboratory, but that he was in the bathroom. Sylar started to wonder why he had been placed there, but he was interrupted by a sudden wave of overpowering nausea. He scrambled for the toilet bowl before being violently sick. After a couple of minutes, the convulsions died down, and he heard footsteps approaching.

“Sorry about that,” Bennet said as he entered the bathroom. “We had to use the drugs we had around to keep you unconscious on the trip to New York. They can have… unpleasant side effects.”

“Really?” Sylar asked sardonically. “Well, I’m sure you only did what you had to.”

“Right…” Bennet said dismissively. “Anyway, we found the other letter, Gabriel.”

At that, Sylar realized that he was now clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt, rather than the slacks and shirt he had been wearing when he arrived at Bennet’s home. The last envelope had been in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“And you delivered it for me, how nice.”

“Those were the instructions in my letter.”

Sylar’s eyebrows rose at this piece of information. He hadn’t realized that any of the letters contained instructions. Peter’s contingency plan, he supposed.

“I was told to bring you and the letter to Mohinder at the same time,” Bennet informed him. “Apparently, it had to be me who told him about everything. I’m not sure why, though; Mohinder may be the only one left whose moral compass is pointing straight enough for him to have simply killed you.”

Sylar stood up and turned on the tap, cupping his hands under the flow for water to rinse out his mouth. Once the bitter taste of bile had been toned down, he turned to face the other man. “I figured there was a reason I was supposed to come here last. He’d either not believe me and kill me, or he’d consider believing me and I’d have to stay put.”

“Well, I don’t think he particularly wants to consider believing you,” Bennet replied, “but you’re definitely going to have to stay put.” He nodded towards the bathroom door. “He wants to talk to you.”

Sylar nodded and followed the older man out into the main room of the loft. The maze of desks and tables that had replaced the maze of paintings remained, and they wove through it on their way to the back, where Mohinder sat at a desk, facing away from them.

Sylar considered saying something—a greeting, a joke—but the tension seemed too thick to risk provoking the man. Finally, he turned around in his chair, holding his letter. Sylar noticed that the envelope labeled ‘Mohinder’ was sitting on the desk.

“I’m not doing this for your sake,” Mohinder said.

“Fair enough,” Sylar replied.

“Peter was far too trusting an individual. I don’t know quite what he thought would come of this, but I’m not going to let his sacrifice be for nothing.” Mohinder paused for a minute, seeming to pull himself together. Sylar shifted his weight between his feet. “How about we hear it in your own words, then? What fundamentally changed in you when you killed Peter Petrelli?”

Sylar gave a little shrug. “My DNA?”


	2. History

9:33 am on Monday, July 9th, found Mohinder knocking on the door to Sylar’s new apartment. It had been three days since Bennet had shown up with the unconscious murderer, and Mohinder was just as uneasy now as he had been that first day. While he waited to be let in, he checked his gun in his holster, as well as the box containing syringes in his messenger bag.

The door opened to Sylar, looking composed. “Mohinder, come in,” he said, stepping aside and gesturing with his hand.

Mohinder entered, feeling nervous, and looked around at the apartment. Noticing this, Sylar closed the door and asked “What do you think?”

Not looking at the other man, Mohinder replied “If it were up to me, you’d be locked up.”

“Well, it wasn’t up to you,” Sylar said. “I will not go back to one of those cells, and Bennet was smart enough to realize that this way is best.”

Mohinder ignored what Sylar had just said and headed towards the sofa to the left. He put his bag down on the table in front of it and was about to sit down when-

“Sylar? Is this your old sofa?”

“It is. Apparently, the Company cleaned out my old place after you found it, and most of my stuff was still in storage. I’m surprised you recognize it, Mohinder.”

“Well, it’s fairly distinct,” he replied, making a face at the upholstery. “We should get started, though. Where can I plug in my laptop?”

“Over there,” Sylar said, motioning to a power outlet to the left of the couch as he sat down in the adjacent armchair. “This would have been easier at the loft, you know.”

Looking up from the plug, Mohinder gave Sylar a distrustful glare. “There’s too much in that lab that I can’t risk you seeing.”

“So you decided that this should be done here?”

“I don’t want you around the resources any Company lab has, and we certainly can’t do this in a café somewhere,” Mohinder told him. “And I’m not exactly feeling gracious enough to invite you over for tea with Molly around.”

Sylar sighed. “All right. Let’s get started.”

Mohinder nodded, a slight grimace on his face as he entered his password into his laptop. “I’ve been given the Company’s files on you,” he told Sylar, pulling them up on the screen. “They include information on your time in Central America, so I’m fairly certain they’re complete. But there are several gaps in the Company’s knowledge, so I’m going to start by taking a bit of a history.”

“Sure,” Sylar replied. Mohinder eyed him once more with suspicion. His tone was inscrutable, and Mohinder couldn’t shake the worry that this could go very wrong at any moment.

“It seems that you had a normal life growing up,” Mohinder said, summarizing what little of Sylar’s past was recorded in the Company file. “Neither of your parents manifested abilities, though it’s unknown if either of them carried the genetic markers. Your own manifestation was fairly late—not until after my father found you, correct?” He tried not to let his tone waver as he spoke of Chandra, and the words came out sounding tight. Sylar noticed this.

“No.”

A beat. “What?”

“The manifestation of my abilities wasn’t triggered by your father,” Sylar clarified. “They manifested when I was 20, when my own father died.”

Mohinder looked back at the screen of his laptop. “Father: Thomas Charles Gray, 1947-1999,” he read. “Died of liver cancer at the age of 52. This caused your manifestation?”

Sylar nodded. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but yes.”

Mohinder looked up. “How?”

“Do you really want to know?” Sylar asked.

Mohinder’s eyes darted back to the screen as if it might give him a reason why he wouldn’t want to know. “Well, it’s not like you killed him, is it?” he said. Then, noticing Sylar’s jaw tighten, he hastily added “I mean, you didn’t take any ability at that time, right?”

Though Sylar didn’t move, didn’t look away from Mohinder, it seemed that he had retreated. “Maybe you should remind yourself of what my ability is, doctor,” he said, his voice low.

Not looking back at his laptop this time, Mohinder spoke. “I’ve heard it called ‘intuitive aptitude.’ You know how things work.” A pause. “Don’t tell me seeing someone die caused you to understand death?”

Suddenly, Sylar stood up and began walking to the kitchen. “I forgot to offer you a drink when you arrived,” he said with his back turned. “I’ve made brewed iced tea, if you’d like some.”

“I, uh-” Mohinder stammered, confused. “Sure.”

Sylar came back a moment later carrying two tall glasses and handed one to Mohinder. “Not even ten a.m. and it’s already 80 degrees outside.” He sat back down in his armchair with one leg curled under himself and took a sip. “My father wasn’t the first person I knew to die, Mohinder, and I didn’t understand death until a few months ago.”

Mohinder did a quick mental calculation. Maya. Maya must have killed him. Neither the Company nor Hiro had actually succeeded. “Well, then, what triggered your manifestation?”

Sylar took a deep breath in. “My uncle died when I was 9 years old,” he said. “He was the first person I knew to die. He was 38. He… his death was sudden, but not unexpected.” He put his drink down on a coaster on the coffee table and looked back up at Mohinder, who appeared curious. “My grandfather had already had his heart broken by my uncle, but the death was worse. He died less than a year later.

“My grandfather fought in World War 2—he was drafted in 1943 and came home when the war was over. He brought back with him a watch.” Sylar held up his wrist. Mohinder noticed that the watch face read “Sylar.”

Mohinder was somewhat uncertain about how all this would lead to Sylar’s manifestation, but he was astounded at how the personal information was being volunteered. Sylar didn’t seem terribly upset just then, but it was obvious that he considered these events and these people to be important parts of both his life and who he was as a person.

“When my father was eight, my grandparents had saved up enough money to open Gray and Sons. My father went to work there when he was 18, and my uncle joined him three years later. My uncle didn’t stay there long. Despite his passion for his work, my grandfather never tried to fix the watch he’d brought home from the war. He said there were some things that were too special to be tinkered with by someone ordinary like him.”

Bennet had once asked Mohinder if he thought there was anything left of Gabriel Gray. Mohinder didn’t get a chance to say he wasn’t sure before Bennet went on to pontificate about the changes to the brain and DNA that he believed accompanied the absorption of an ability, but now Mohinder felt he might be starting to understand the answer to the question.

“When my grandfather died, he willed the watch to my father along with the shop. My father put it away—he was too upset by my grandfather’s death to want it around. He was angry at my uncle for most of his life. He thought it was wrong for my uncle to refuse the good life my grandfather had prepared for him. I don’t really know what my uncle’s life was like after he left the shop, but on one of the few occasions I saw him, he was the one who told me the story of the watch. He told me I was special enough for it.”

The glass in Mohinder’s hand was now covered in condensation, and it threatened to slip from his grasp. Sitting forward, he set it down on a coaster near Sylar’s glass and wiped his wet hand on his jeans. “And when your father died, the watch was willed to you,” he stated.

“It was like an awakening,” Sylar said, looking him intently in the eyes. “I stumbled around at first, not entirely in control of what I could do, but, the better I got, the more confident I felt that I could do more than I was doing. Over seven years, I became more.”

Mohinder understood. Sylar had not replaced, repressed, or destroyed Gabriel Gray. Sylar had been formed as Gabriel Gray had been formed. Gabriel Gray wanted to be special growing up because he was Sylar. Sylar felt remorse for his first murders because he was Gabriel Gray. It wasn’t that he wanted to be Gabriel Gray, that he wanted to be Sylar—he had to be.

“When you killed,” Mohinder said slowly, “you became more, still.”

Sylar looked away, across the room, where he gazed at nothing. “I did.”

“And it came to you killing Peter.”

A bittersweet smile quirked at Sylar’s mouth. “Peter… I didn’t expect to be given a chance like that. Even the weak powers I had at the beginning bothered some people.”

Mohinder shifted the position of his laptop and turned so that he faced Sylar more directly. “When you first manifested, you mean? I thought you didn’t realize that you-“

“I didn’t,” Sylar interjected. “But, like I said, things still changed. To my mother, it looked like I was coming into my own, but it bothered my girlfriend.”

At that, Mohinder frowned. Touching the world his father had discovered had had its costs for his personal life, too. There were now precious few people who were capable of understanding him, he knew. Reluctantly, he considered that what he was learning by talking with Sylar might grant the man a spot on that list.

“My father’s death happened very fast,” Sylar said, looking back at Mohinder. “Never sick a day in his life, then, the next thing we knew, he had three months to live. A month after the funeral, I moved into my own place. Theresa and I had been together for a while; I was going to wait a few months, make sure the lifestyle suited us, then propose. I told my mother. She was thrilled. But things didn’t work out. Theresa said I’d changed—I guess I had.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Mohinder said, unsure of what else there was to say.

Sylar gave another little smile. “It’s all right,” he said. “I think the falling out between her and my mother was worse than our break-up.”

Mohinder hesitated a moment before speaking again. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.

Sylar gave a slightly confused look. “I thought you wanted a history,” he replied.

“I, uh… Yes, of course,” Mohinder said. “It’s just… surprising how forthcoming you’re being.”

“How well did you know Peter?” Sylar asked.

Now it was Mohinder’s turn to look confused. “Peter? Not as well as I would have liked,” he replied.

Sylar nodded, looking slightly sad.


	3. Control

Angela Petrelli marched determinedly towards the office, not bothering to knock before opening the door and entering. Seated at the large desk near the back of the room was Bob Bishop; in the chair facing the desk sat Mohinder Suresh. Both men looked up in surprise at Angela’s entrance.

“Angela!” Bob exclaimed, standing. “What are you doing- I was just in a meeting with Dr.-“

“I want an explanation from you, Bob,” Angela interrupted, her voice stern. “I want to know why my son’s murderer is still alive and why he’s been set free.”

Bob hesitated, considering his words. “Now, Angela, we’re all very sorry for the loss of Peter,” he said, reaching out to take her hand. “But killing Sylar won’t bring him back, and we’d be crazy to pass up this opportunity.”

“I don’t give a damn about any opportunity!” Angela snapped, freeing her hand.

Bob gave a heavy sigh. “If you would just consider-“

“No!” she shouted. “This insanity has gone on long enough! You think you’re saving the world, but all you’re doing is playing some despicable game of roulette, and I will not let my son’s death be another way for you to delude yourself!”

Bob was silent, tasting the bitterness of an old argument he knew was a stalemate; Mohinder took the chance to speak.

“Mrs. Petrelli,” he said, rising from his chair.

“What?” came the terse reply.

“I know how difficult this must be for you-”

“Do you?”

“-and I share your concern. Sylar killed a lot of people, and this could go badly.”

Angela shot a pointed look at Bob, who grimaced.

“But Peter chose to die to give us all this opportunity,” Mohinder continued. “It would be an insult to his memory not to try to make this work.”

Angela took a deep breath. “My son’s idealism was… misguided.”

As compassionately as he could, Mohinder replied “The work I’ve been doing with Sylar suggests that might not be true.”

For a long moment, the three of them stood at an impasse. Angela and Mohinder stared at each other while Bob watched them nervously. The light knock on the open door startled them all.

They turned to see Sylar standing in the doorway. There was an indefinite expression on his face as he looked into the room, gaze landing on Angela. Mohinder tensed in anticipation of the conflict that was sure to erupt, but Angela only glared at Sylar, not saying anything.

“I’m done meeting with Bennet,” Sylar said after a moment, still looking at the woman whose son he’d murdered. “We should get going, Mohinder.”

Mohinder, confused, turned to look back at Angela. He was surprised to see that she didn’t look angry anymore, but instead wore a vaguely perplexed expression. Hoping to leave before anything bad happened, Mohinder replied.

“Ah, yes, I think that would be a good idea,” he said, picking up his bag from the floor next to the chair he’d been sitting in. “Bob, I’ll be in touch. Mrs. Petrelli, nice to see you again.”

He headed quickly through the door, Sylar following.

When they were a fair distance away, Mohinder stopped. “What the hell was all that about?” he asked.

Sylar gave a small smirk. “She was trying to use her ability on me,” he explained.

“Her ability?” Mohinder echoed. “Wait, trying?”

“It didn’t work. I was trying to use it right back at her.”

~~~

It was a little after 8:00 in the evening. Mohinder turned the car off of the secondary highway onto a side gravel road, passing through a gap in a wall of trees and coming upon an open field. Pulling over to park the car, Mohinder glanced at Sylar in the passenger’s seat.

“This look good?” he asked.

Sylar nodded. “It should do fine. No one’s likely to see us behind those trees.”

“That’s the idea,” said Mohinder as he unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car. Sylar followed, and, after Mohinder grabbed his bag from the back seat, the two of them walked towards the centre of the field. The sun was getting low in the sky to their left, bright orange and warm, causing the two men to cast long shadows over the yellow-green grass. To the right, where the gravel road led, a house could be seen in the distance.

Mohinder pointed to the house. “So long as you don’t damage Bob’s vacation home and don’t attract the attention of anybody in the area, we should be good.”

Sylar stopped and regarded the house uncertainly. “It’s so… quaint,” he said. “And blue. I don’t see Bob as the pastoral type, myself.”

“I’m sure he’s an interesting and multi-faceted individual underneath his contemptible exterior,” Mohinder replied as he rummaged through his bag. He pulled out a tube of tennis balls and a clipboard. “All right,” he said. “I have a series of trials to run. I’ll need to test how well you can control powers you acquired yourself compared to powers only Peter had. I’ll also need to test how well you use those powers simultaneously.”

Sylar frowned. “I can control all of my powers fine.”

“It still needs to be tested,” Mohinder replied. “It’s not unreasonable to suspect that the powers Peter had would work differently because of the possible difference in the way his brain stored them. It’s also possible that the powers you both had were affected by the absorption of Peter’s powers, or that powers may have been strengthened by empathy if you’ve met the original carriers of those powers since Peter’s death.”

“Fine,” Sylar sighed. “Anything else you want me to do?”

“Peter was most powerful and least in control when he was feeling emotionally overwhelmed,” Mohinder said, opening the tube of tennis balls and taking one out. “First, let’s have a demonstration of the control you claim you have, and then let’s see if I can’t make you lose hold of it.”

Smirking, Sylar replied “Yes, let’s.”

~~~

The sun was gently touching the horizon when Sylar came to. He squinted against its light and slowly brought a hand to the front of his blood-soaked t-shirt. The fluid was sticky and starting to coagulate. Lifting his reddened fingers to gaze at them, Sylar wondered if there was something else for him to wear. He hadn’t thought to bring any extra clothing; he hadn’t expected things to go this far.

“Lay still a while,” Mohinder said, voice low, as he appeared at Sylar’s side.

“I’m all right,” Sylar replied, waving a hand at him and sitting up. “How long was I out?”

“Twenty minutes. I was beginning to worry.”

“Really.”

Mohinder gave Sylar a slightly annoyed look but couldn’t hide his apprehension about what had happened. For a moment, they were silent. “Take your shirt off,” Mohinder directed. “I want to take a look at where the wounds were.”

Sylar complied, pulling the shirt up over his head. It left little smears of crimson on his face. Mohinder leaned forward and, using his fingers, wiped away the blood that was on Sylar’s chest, revealing nothing but unblemished skin. Shot in the heart, a through-and-through, and Sylar was alive and breathing in front of him.

“Incredible,” he breathed.

A pause. “Mohinder?”

“Yes?”

“Your hand is shaking.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, quickly pulling his fingers back from Sylar’s chest. “Sorry. I just…” He paused for a moment, taking a steadying breath. “I really am glad to see you alive. When you were dead, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had just destroyed everything that Peter had hoped for.”

Sylar leaned forward and looked Mohinder in the eye. “I let you shoot me, Mohinder,” he said. “I was in control of myself the whole time. You didn’t make me incapable of staying alive.”

Mohinder broke the gaze and looked down. “Another part of me wondered if I had merely shot you in time to stop something worse,” he admitted quietly.

To his surprise, Sylar gave a small chuckle at that. “What?” Mohinder asked. “What’s funny?”

Smiling, Sylar replied “When Peter and I were fighting, I taunted him about that.”

Mohinder gave Sylar a confused look. “I don’t see how that’s funny.”

“I was trying to upset him enough so that he’d do something stupid,” Sylar replied. “But it backfired, and he electrocuted me.”

“I imagine it served you right,” Mohinder said with a frown.

Sylar scratched absently at a smear of now-dried blood on his cheek. “Yes and no,” he answered. “I told him that, once I’d killed him, I’d be able to control his powers better than he could. And I was right about that. But I don’t think I could have beaten him in a fight for those powers, and, in the end, he was the one in control.”

Mohinder gave a small smile. “You know,” he said, “Bennet didn’t believe what had happened at first. He called me after he read his letter, convinced that you had forged it as part of some scheme to gain our trust. Nathan was finally able to convince him that the letters were genuine, but Bennet very much believed that you could have beaten Peter.”

“I don’t think Bennet really understands what happened,” Sylar mused. “In the meeting this afternoon, he mentioned how Peter used to let his emotions run away with him. I didn’t think it was worth trying to explain to him how Peter’s choice to die was a demonstration of control.”

“What do you mean?” Mohinder asked.

“In the end, he understood that letting me kill him was how he could remove both the threat of himself losing control and the threat of me killing more people,” Sylar explained.

“In order for that to be true,” Mohinder said, “he had to believe that you’d accept the peace he offered. He had to have faith that you wouldn’t kill for the sake of killing, and that you’d co-operate with the people who could benefit from studying you.” He gave a sad sigh. “I don’t understand why he believed that without seeing it, personally.”

Sylar cocked an eyebrow at him curiously. “You mean your letter didn’t tell you that?” he asked.

“No,” Mohinder replied, confused.

“Hmm,” was all the reply Sylar gave to that. Then, looking down at himself, he said “I think I’m dry enough to not get the car covered in blood. We should head back.” And with that he got up, his maroon-painted torso bathed in the orange light of sunset, and headed back across the field, Mohinder following.


End file.
